


Oh Sweet Compassion

by sarahcakes613



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahcakes613/pseuds/sarahcakes613
Summary: In 1875, Rafael Barba finds a man dying and makes a decision.In 2014, he comes face to face with the man for the first time since that night.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 64
Collections: Barisi Creatures Bingo, The Leonard Cohen Files





	Oh Sweet Compassion

**Author's Note:**

> TW for mentions of blood and blood drinking.
> 
> Thanks to Bea on twt for confirming my Italian! Translations are at the bottom.

_I asked you if a man could be forgiven  
_ _And though I failed at love, was this a crime?  
_ _You said, ‘Don't worry, don't worry, darling,’  
_ _There are many ways a man can serve his time_ – Iodine, Leonard Cohen

**New York City, 1875**

Rafael keeps to the shadows and feeds well. New York’s population grows every year, and there are always criminals who are better served fueling him than chasing their own desires.

He’s been alone for sixty years, travelling the waters and lands of the Americas since being turned as a soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. In his near century of living, first as a human and then as a vampire, Rafael has been a shipbuilder, a soldier, an attorney. He never stays in one city more than fifteen years, never takes a mate. He never turns his victims. He has protocols.

He travels alone, always alone. It’s safer, that way. His time in New York is winding down, his associates at the bank have started to tease him about the way he hasn’t yet begun to grey at the temples like the rest of them.

He is walking through the newly christened Riverside Park, although it’s still largely undeveloped and at this time of night there are very few people of any moral fibre hanging about. His sensitive ears pick up the filthy murmurs of prostitutes and the mutterings of vagrants but he is listening for something more specific, for underhanded dealings or the stuttered thumping of someone running from the scene of a crime.

It doesn’t take long. A man is running straight towards him and Rafael can smell warm blood on his hands. As the runner approaches, Rafael puts his hands out and grabs him by his torn lapels, pulling him into the bushes. The blood on his hands isn’t his and the straight-razor he fumbles for smells like it’s been freshly used.

Rafael knocks the blade out of his hand with a dark laugh and bends his head over the man’s neck. He can tell the man is a killer and in this moment Rafael is his judge, jury, and executioner.

When he is finished slaking his thirst, he hoists the man over the low retaining wall and watches impassively as he drops into the Hudson River. He turns and starts walking in the direction of his boarding house but stops when he hears the tell-tale gasps of someone struggling to breathe.

He follows the sound down a secluded path to the body of a man lying in a pool of his own blood. Rafael kneels carefully next to him, keeping his feet out of the tacky puddle. The man’s throat is cut, the line matching the razor Rafael’s victim had held.

“ _Aiutami per favore,_ ” the man gasps. “ _Mamma Maria, aiutami._ ”

He’s dressed in baggy trousers and a simple linen shirt, and beneath his own warmly metallic blood, Rafael smells something stale and animal. The Italian is most likely just another immigrant working in the stockyards, dying alone because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

His eyes flutter open and the almost glacial blue of them startles Rafael. He stares down at the man, who doesn’t seem to notice he’s not alone, as he keeps mumbling to himself. His hand is over his heart, his fingers twitching, and Rafael realizes he is attempting to cross himself.

In sixty years, Rafael has never once turned someone, and he isn’t sure what it is about this man that compels him. Maybe it’s because this man is a true innocent, Rafael can smell it on him. His soul is pure and good and he deserves to live more than his mere twenty or so years.

There’s something else to his scent as well, something that sings to Rafael’s own soul, and he doesn’t examine it too closely beyond acknowledging that he’s never smelled it on anyone before. It probably means something but there will be time to explore that later.

He needs to act quickly if he’s going to save the man from complete death. He gently lifts the man’s torso and head so he is near to sitting, slumped back against Rafael’s chest. He bites his own wrist and holds it to the man’s mouth.

“I’m here to help you,” he says soothingly. “Drink, now.”

“ _Cosa sta succedendo?_ ” The man asks. “ _Non voglio essere dannato._ ” He tries to push Rafael away but he is too weak.

“Drink,” Rafael urges him again, and he presses his wrist against the other man’s mouth, watching carefully as the first drops of his own blood trickle onto his lips.

He waits one, two beats, and then feels as the man’s lips seal tight against his wrist, drawing his life’s blood out. He doesn’t have much strength in him but he sucks at Rafael’s wrist for a minute or so, then coughs wetly before his eyes roll back in his head and he loses consciousness. Rafael can hear his heartbeat slowing steadily and then stop.

The unconscious man is taller than Rafael, but slender, and no struggle for Rafael’s creature strength. He slings the man over his shoulder and moves swiftly in the dark, carrying him to the brownstone in which he rents a set of rooms.

His landlady is an elderly widow, nearly blind and fully deaf. She’s delightful company when Rafael is in the mood for a game of cribbage and stays out of his way the rest of the time. She’ll be tucked in bed at this time of night and no one else is around to see him creeping into his room with his unconscious companion.

He lays the man down on his sofa, covering him with a blanket, and settles down in an armchair to wait. He has few memories of his own making but he doesn’t think it will take long.

The man’s eyelids flutter, and then his eyes shoot open and he sits upright, hands grasping at his neck. They feel smooth skin, his fatal wound healed now. He looks in horror at Rafael, agony writ across his expression.

“ _Perché dovresti farlo?_ ” He asks, his voice broken and anguished. “ _Avresti dovuto lasciarmi morire._ ”

He doesn’t give Rafael a chance to explain, to tell him about the opportunities that he now has. He stands up, kicking off the blanket, and runs out the door. Rafael shakes his head. He could chase the man, but perhaps it’s best to leave things be. He’ll learn quickly, as Rafael had to.

* * *

**New York City, 2014**

“Rafa, glad you could make it. Maybe you can explain to my new detective here why we _don’t promise potential witnesses special legal assistance without clearing it with the DA first_.”

Olivia’s tone is biting and normally Rafael would be all too happy to help her take an arrogant upstart down a peg or two, but he’s distracted, can’t focus on her frustration or even the case at hand, because of the sudden thumping in his ears as he hears his past returning to confront him.

It’s the sound of feet running in the park at night, a haunted voice crying out in Italian. He looks at the third person in Olivia’s office and shivers at the sight of those glacial blue eyes.

“Detective,” Rafael says coolly. “why don’t you walk me through your interview with Luna Garcia?”

He nods to Liv briefly and leads the detective to an interview room, closing the door and lowering the blinds.

“I used to dream about this moment. About what I would say if I ever saw you again.” The detective doesn’t look at Rafael as he speaks.

“And now that you have?” Rafael asks.

“I’ve seen you, before.” He says, sidestepping the question. “On the news, in court.” He turns to face the ADA. “You turned me into something I didn’t want to become and I’ve had to live with that for almost 140 years.”

He pauses, considering Barba. “How old are you?”

“In total, or like this?”

“Either. Both.”

“I was born in 1780. I was turned in 1815.” Barba looks out at the street below them. “This is my fourth time living in New York. For all that it changes, it somehow seems the same.”

“I never left.” The detective says. “I thought about it, thought about going back to Italy, finding my family. I’ve still got some, which let me tell you, that’s weird. I’m like the fun uncle who takes all the family pictures because I can’t explain that I won’t show up in ‘em.”

“So you’ve done alright for yourself?” Rafael asks.

“For the most part,” he says. “Even a century ago, New York was a good place to hide in plain sight. I worked in the stockyards til they noticed a decided increase of dead cows in my section.” He shrugs. “I got in on the ground floor with the MTA, digging the tunnels. That was pretty cool.”

He comes over to stand next to Rafael, looking through the window to the streetscape. Neither of them are reflected in the clear glass.

“Did you change your name?” The detective asks. “I tried looking you up once, but never got further back then your supposed Bronx childhood in the late 1980’s.”

Barba shakes his head. “I’ve just been very good at scrubbing my identities each time I resurface in a city. It’s going to get harder next time, the internet’s not a very forgetful or forgiving space. What about you? What was your name when you docked at Ellis Island?”

“Domenico. I go by Dominick now. Or Sonny. I prefer Sonny. Is there going to be a next time?”

Rafael looks at Sonny. They’re standing so close he can see the pale vein in Sonny’s throat where no pulse beats.

“Everyone ages,” he says. “Except us. People start to notice.”

Sonny shrugs. “Hair dye’s been pretty good to me. Sometimes I wink and tap my nose if people ask who my surgeon is, that’s always good to buy a few years. Maybe I’m just a creature of habit though, I don’t think I could leave the place I’ve made my home. Maybe I’d feel differently if I didn’t have my family here.”

“How do you explain yourself?” Rafael asks curiously.

“Distant cousin doing genealogical research, wouldn’t you know I found out I had a whole branch of relations right here in Staten Island.” Sonny says. “They’re all my sister’s kids. Well, her great – times about six – grandkids.”

“And you never made a nest for yourself? Created your own family?” Rafael shouldn’t be surprised, it’s not like he’d ever done it, beyond the one man standing next to him.

The man who now looks sharply at him. “I wasn’t going to make that choice for someone else.” He says simply. “And I never found anybody who made me want to.”

Rafael looks at him from the corner of his eye. Sonny looks steadily back. He thinks about the way his soul had heard Sonny, had heard music in his scent that fateful night. He’s never once heard anything like it since.

“So what now?” He asks, turning away from the taller man to look out the window again.

“I don’t really know,” Sonny admits. “If there’s a rulebook for this sort of thing, I didn’t get my copy when you turned me.”

“Well, you did run out of there awfully fast,” Rafael says lightly. Sonny chuckles, but there’s a tone of regret in his laughter.

“And maybe I shouldn’t have, but what’s done is done.” He says. “I think we’ve both been making up our own rules as we go and it’s worked for us, more or less. Maybe now we make up some rules together?”

Rafael nods and casts his eyes over Sonny’s hair, taking in the way the light highlights the few dyed silver streaks that peek through.

“I have to admit, I find myself reluctant to give up New York once again. You’ll have to introduce me to your hairstylist.”

Sonny grins. “Her name’s Clairol. Give me an hour and a pair of gloves, we’ll have you looking a decade older in no time.”

For over a century, Rafael has never stayed in one place more than fifteen years, never taken a mate. Where he once found the idea repellant, he now finds it intriguing. When he looks at Sonny, he feels a warmth in his veins that normally only rises up when he feeds.

He has protocols, but maybe it is time to determine some new ones.

**Author's Note:**

> Aiutami per favore – help me please  
> Cosa sta succedendo – what’s going on  
> Non voglio essere dannato – I don’t want to be damned  
> Perché dovresti farlo - why would you do that  
> Avresti dovuto lasciarmi morire – you should have let me die


End file.
